


Alone in a Crowded Starship

by der_tanzer



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 20:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_tanzer/pseuds/der_tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scotty doesn't think he has any friends. His friends think he's wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in a Crowded Starship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amine_eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amine_eyes/gifts).



> A prompty thing fill and birthday gift for Amine_Eyes. Hope it's what you wanted, wee lassie.

Almost from the moment he was first beamed aboard, Scotty knew he would enjoy life on the _Enterprise_. Not from the very _first_ moment, as that was spent inside a waterline, but once his survival wasn’t so immediately in doubt, he knew he was in the right place. The crew was a little high strung, sure, and younger than he expected, but they definitely knew what they were doing. And getting the assignment was a huge step up from outpost duty on a frozen planet. Aboard _Enterprise_ he could really explore his interests and put his skills to use.

The hard part was getting acquainted with the rest of the crew. It wasn’t like back home in Scotland where a guy called his three best friends to help him move and it turned into a block party. It wasn’t even like moving into the dorm at Starfleet Academy, where three guys turned up to help and it turned into a hallway party. In Scotty’s experience, nearly everywhere he went stood a pretty good chance of turning into a party. But packing up his possessions, and Mr. Keenser’s, and beaming aboard the ship was different. Two Transporter Room ensigns loaded their baggage onto carts and showed them to their quarters. There was no unpacking, no booze, and no party.

He spent the first day settling in, hanging his models of Starfleet ships and pinning _Enterprise_ schematics to the walls. Some people liked to watch videos or read something off-subject to unwind after a shift, but Scotty didn’t have a whole lot else he wanted to think about. After a long day in Engineering, nothing eased his mind quite like being surrounded by the trappings of Engineering. A night spent dreaming of warp cores and capacitors was a happy night for Mr. Scott.

But he did wish that some of those happy dreams were preceded by a few drinks with one or two likeminded engineers. Or anyone knowledgeable in physics or warp dynamics. He wasn’t a snob. Housekeeping crew would suffice if they could keep up with the drinking. But he never seemed to run into them.

***

He’d been aboard almost two weeks, making casual acquaintances among his Engineering crew and speaking a few words with the captain when they met in the corridors, but never quite feeling included. Even after the intense, and intensely bizarre, experience he and Kirk had shared, he didn’t feel like the captain was his friend. That wasn’t unusual, he’d never been friends with any of his captains, but thought Kirk could have been his foot in the door. Without an in, he mostly kept to himself. It wasn’t like him and he felt the vague sadness that came with living what seemed like someone else’s life.

One day Scotty just decided he’d had enough. He went to the commissary during shift change and loaded a tray with his favorite Scottish comfort foods, choosing a seat near the middle of the room before it got too crowded. A small group of familiar faces trooped in a few minutes later, collected plates with a wide variety of food, and began looking for someplace to sit. Scotty watched them casually, smiling a little as if with private happy thoughts. He had none, but it kept him from breaking into outright hopefulness.

One of the young men in the group looked over and his face blossomed in a real grin. He nudged the man beside him and nodded in Scotty’s direction. The other man waved, Scotty waved back, and suddenly they were all heading toward him.

“Meester Scott,” exclaimed the young man who had noticed him first. “I have been wanting to meet wit’ you for zo long.” He put his tray down boldly beside Scotty’s and pulled up a chair.

“Have ye now?” Scotty said happily. “Yer Mr. Chekov, right? The one who’s so good wi’ the transporter they hardly need me at all.”

“I got lucky vonce,” he said, blushing shyly. Scotty remembered then that the poor lad hadn’t gotten lucky the second time and wisely dropped the subject.

“Hi, I’m Lt. Sulu,” his friend said, offering Scotty his hand across the table.

“Aye, the pilot. I remember you. And that must make you Lt. Uhura.”

“Was there ever any doubt?” she replied archly, then smiled as she shook his hand.

“Vhy have ve not seen you here before?” Chekov asked brightly. “I have been meaning to get down to Engineering to zay hello, but zhere haz not been time.”

“Right?” Sulu cut in with a laugh. “How many times have we saved Earth this month?”

“Three, at least,” Uhura answered. “But I heard our next mission is three days out so we ought to get a little downtime. At least catch up on our sleep.”

“And our partying, right, Pavel?”

“I do not know if I can keep partying wit’ you, Hikaru,” he grinned. “Ze keptin does not like to zee me hungover on ze bridge vhen he vas doing ze pouring.”

“You drink wi’ the captain?” Scotty asked, surprised.

“He’s the host,” Uhura said dryly. “They’re lucky to have me on the bridge crew. I’m the only one who starts the day by eating breakfast and _not_ throwing up five minutes later.”

“Only because you spend your nights with Mr. Spock,” Sulu remarked.

“What can I say? I prefer to be drunk on life.”

Scotty looked uncertainly from one to the other and then noticed Chekov blushing. Another secret everyone else seemed to know. He tried to wrap his mind around the concept of this lovely young woman consorting with their Vulcan first officer and found himself blushing, too.

“You should join us tonight,” Sulu said, interrupting his thoughts. “It’s Dr. McCoy’s birthday and the captain’s throwing him a party.”

“Tha’s nice of ya, Mr. Sulu, but maybe I should wait for an invitation from th’ captain.” He had an idea that if he was welcome, it would have been mentioned sooner. They’d had a meeting just this morning about a problem with communications on deck seventeen. Kirk had had ample opportunity then.

“No, not at all. He likes it when people drop by. The more the merrier, right?”

Scotty looked to Uhura, who was smiling pleasantly, and then at Chekov, who seemed to be the most enthusiastic.

“Da, he is right. Please, Meester Scott. Ve are ze heroes. Ve should all be friends.”

“Th’ heroes?”

“That’s what some of the other shifts call us. Because we’re the ones who took out the Romulans and everything,” Sulu explained. “It’s not exclusive, no one knows better than us how many people it takes to run a starship, but we kind of stuck together after. That’s how you got the assignment, you know. You’re one of us.”

“Is tha’ right,” he murmured, poking idly at his lunch. It certainly hadn’t felt that way.

“Da,” Chekov said eagerly. “It is only zhat ve are on ze bridge and you are in Engineering zhat…”

“We kind of forgot,” Sulu finished lamely.

“It’s alrigh’. I’ve had so much ta do, settlin’ in and getting’ the old girl in shape again, I have no’ had time for socializin’.”

“That makes you the smart one,” Uhura said, giving him a wink that made him feel better about everything.

“Zo you vill come,” Chekov said firmly. Then he turned his attention to Scotty’s plate and asked what he was having. When told it was traditional Scottish fare, he began explaining his own traditional Russian meal and why it was objectively better. Soon the conversation was completely taken over by food comparisons and the table turned into a taste-test buffet that even Uhura couldn’t refuse.

Scotty might have used that as an excuse to “forget” the invitation, but Chekov walked with him out of the commissary afterwards and made him promise he would be there. Not the most strong-willed of men, Scotty didn’t see how anyone could deny the exuberant little Russian anything he asked. Even if his idea of food _was_ terrible. Presumably Kirk wouldn’t let him set the menu.

***

It was partly Chekov’s exuberance that made Scotty so nervous. He could handle Sulu’s confidence and Uhura’s lofty, and well deserved, superiority, but Chekov—he was something else. Confident, but apparently unaware of his superiority, and driven to be liked by everyone. Scotty suspected that, if young Chekov had been a girl, he might be one of those who routinely found herself on the verge of sex with no clear idea of how she got there. For all Scotty knew, he might find himself there anyway. Stranger things had happened.

Their superiors were another matter altogether. For all that he liked McCoy, the doctor struck him as a very unhappy man, and an unhappy drinker. A good doctor, but a rough-edged man who might not welcome company. There was talk, even down in the bowels of Engineering, about McCoy and Kirk and how they partied. But it was whispered that McCoy wasn’t always a very willing participant. He preferred to drink, and play, in private. James Kirk did not. Scotty wasn’t sure he wanted to be involved in something that complicated. He’d rather rewire every electrical conduit in Engineering that witness a lover’s spat.

Still, at the appointed time, he went to the captain’s quarters in his off-duty uniform and shakily requested entrance. He could hear people inside, muffled voices erupting every few seconds in laughter, but it was nearly a minute before the door slid open. More than enough time to convince himself he didn’t belong here, and to think of a plausible excuse to speak to the captain before scurrying back down to Engineering where things made sense.

Then the door opened and Scotty forgot his plan.

“Happy birthday, Scotty,” chorused the assembled group. Underneath it he heard Chekov’s belated _Meester Scott_ , and that broke his paralysis.

“Wha—wha’ is all this?” he stammered. Chekov bounded over and grabbed his hand, dragging him over to the bar where Kirk was pouring a drink.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kirk laughed, handing him the glass. “It _is_ your birthday, isn’t it?”

“Aye, ‘tis. But—I guess I forgot. These rascals told me it were a party for th’ doctor.”

“We’re crafty indeed,” Uhura said, clinking glasses with Sulu and Spock. Even McCoy seemed unusually pleased with the trick, and that helped him relax a bit.

“You wouldn’t have come if you knew it was your party, would you?” Sulu asked. “We just couldn’t come up with a better way to get you into the group, short of going down your Hobbit hole and dragging you out by force.”

“This is better,” Scotty agreed. He was starting to relax now and threw back his drink with a practiced flick of the wrist.

“And zhere iz cake,” Chekov added brightly. Sulu snorted and Uhura elbowed him sharply.

“Good, I like cake,” Scotty said with a perfectly straight face.

The crew presented him with a gift, a bottle of hundred year old Scotch that they’d spent most of the week working to acquire, but protested when he started to open it.

“You should save that for a special occasion,” Kirk suggested.

“Aye, Captain. I did. Probably not going to have one more special than this anytime soon.” He poured a little into each of a dozen glasses so everyone could have a taste.

“In that case,” Jim said with a shrug, “let’s have a toast to Montgomery Scott, the newest member of the _Enterprise_ crew.”

The Scotch was excellent and the cake was everything a birthday cake should be, but to Scotty the only part of the evening that mattered was that toast. From now on he would never be alone.


End file.
